Ken Early: England braced for finely-tuned Swiss machine unbeaten since Yakin-Xhaka peace deal
Euro 2024 quarter-finals: England v Switzerland, Düsseldorf, 5pm (Live on RTÉ 2)
The Yakin brothers, Murat and Hakan, have inflicted a lot of pain on Irish football in their day, frustrating our attempts to get to two consecutive tournaments back in the days when we felt entitled to it.
Hakan scored against Ireland in three qualifiers for Euro 2004 and World Cup 2006. His older brother Murat, the captain and defensive leader of that Swiss generation, coached Switzerland to their first win of 2024 in Dublin in March. Four months on, Yakin is in the most bullish form of any head coach at the European Championships.
Yakin’s comments after his Switzerland team beat Italy 2-0 in the last 16 straddled the boundary between confidence and hubris. He told Swiss TV station SRF of his delight at seeing that his opposite number, Luciano Spalletti, had decided to line up with a back four.
“We knew they’ve made a lot of changes, they’ve been searching for an identity… I expected a new system, but I didn’t expect them to play a back four. When I saw that, I knew: we’ll destroy them. If they come with four at the back, first we flatten them, then we make them run.”
As post-victory tactical swagger goes, this was up there with Åge Hareide thanking Martin O’Neill for taking off two central midfielders and switching to a diamond at half-time, thus creating the space for Christian Eriksen to run riot in Denmark’s 5-1 win in Dublin in 2017.
You could understand why Yakin was feeling so delighted with himself. The Swiss 3-4-2-1 had controlled the game from start to finish. The three Italians in midfield never got on the ball for any extended spell and Italy hardly created a chance, hardly even got out of their own half.
There must also be an intoxication in knowing that, just a few weeks after a majority of Swiss fans apparently wanted him sacked, he could be about to make history by leading his country to their first-ever tournament semi-final.
Switzerland manager Murat Yakin applauds fans before their last-16 clash with Italy at Olympiastadion in Berlin, Germany. Photograph: Alex Grimm/Getty Images
It looked unlikely that Yakin would ever make it this far back in September 2023, when the captain Granit Xhaka went for him in a post-match interview following Switzerland’s clown-show 2-2 qualifying draw with Kosovo, in which they lost the lead twice and conceded the second equaliser in the 94th minute.
Xhaka’s relationship with Yakin previously looked strained when the midfielder expressed annoyance at Yakin’s decision to take him off after 63 minutes of his 100th cap in a friendly against Kosovo in 2022. The September outburst was more serious because it was an indictment of Yakin’s training methods. “I’m pissed off. We’ve had no tempo in training all week, and that’s how we played. It’s not easy to go from 0 to 100.”
Yakin resisted the temptation to return fire at his captain, noting only that in his opinion it would be better not to air such criticisms in public.
But then, in November, after another disappointing 1-1 qualifying draw with Kosovo – Kosovo matches always the flashpoint – Xhaka had another pop at the coach, this time for playing him in what Xhaka considered to be the wrong position.
In that match, as in a few other Euro qualifiers, Yakin was using Xhaka as an 8 in a 4-3-3, with Denis Zakaria in the holding role. In Xhaka’s opinion, he should always be the deepest-lying midfielder and the main playmaker in the centre, just as he is at Bayer Leverkusen. “The coach has seen how dominant I am in the club in my position,” he said. “Statistics don’t lie.”
A lot of coaches might have taken this as an unacceptable affront to their authority. Yakin decided to negotiate.
As Xhaka explained at a press conference earlier in this tournament: “He came to see me many times. We had dinner together. We drank a lot of wine together. We are adults enough to clarify everything. So everything is going fine. We are both ambitious and we want to be successful for ourselves and for the team. We are glad to have a coach listening to us who wants to talk to us. So I’ve had a great relationship with the coach in the last six, eight months. It has been better than the past.”
Murat Yakin celebrates after his team's victory against Hungary at Cologne Stadium on June 15th. Photograph: Alex Grimm/Getty Images
If the terms of the peace deal could be summarised in a line, it would be, “Okay Granit, let’s do it your way.” Since Switzerland returned to action in 2024, they’ve been playing a Leverkusen-style 3-4-2-1 with Xhaka in his favourite midfield playmaking position. No more 4-3-3, no more number 8. They’re unbeaten in eight games.
(Contemplating this successful rapprochement, old scars on the Irish football memory start to throb. If only certain other coaches had shown the capacity to bend rather than snap in the face of challenges from their best players… maybe the Yakin brothers wouldn’t have had so much joy against Ireland back in the day. Still, if Murat’s success teaches us anything, it’s that it’s self-defeating to hold grudges.)
No doubt, Switzerland have been one of the teams of the tournament so far. They are balanced, crafty, physically strong, with discipline in defence, intelligence in midfield and speed up front.
Uniquely in the tournament, they have national champions in goal (Yann Sommer, Inter), central defence (Manuel Akanji, Man City) and central midfield (Xhaka, Leverkusen).
They will draw confidence from their excellent tournament record against the strongest teams: beating France and drawing with Spain in the last Euros, unlucky not to beat Germany in this one. Ivan Rakitic, the Swiss-born ex-Croatia midfielder, says they remind him of his Croatia team that went to the final of the World Cup in 2018.
[ ‘Dangerous’ Gakpo’s growing goal threat propels Netherlands at Euro 2024 ]
“I have spoken to people who know a lot about football – players, ex-pros who are now experts,” Rakitic told Blick in advance of today’s game. “The opinion is unanimous. Firstly, they all think Switzerland is better at football. Secondly, our team comes across as more likable than the English team.”
Better at football and more likable – might the Swiss be feeling a little too good about their prospects? The fate of their neighbours Austria should be a warning. They went into the game with Turkey on a historic high: “We are playing great football, we are going to Berlin, oh no we have conceded two goals from corners, we are dead.”
Speculation around the England camp suggests that Gareth Southgate is ready to heed Yakin’s gloating over Italy’s doomed back four and mirror Switzerland’s 3-4-2-1, with England practising the system in training during the week.
England's Luke Shaw and Declan Rice in training ahead of their clash with Switzerland. Photograph: Richard Pelham/Getty Images
The big news is that Luke Shaw is finally available for selection. Can Southgate afford to plunge him into a tournament quarter-final after a five-month absence from football? Against that, what is the point of including Shaw in the squad, knowing you would have to wait for him to work his way back to full fitness, if you were not willing to select him once he declared himself ready?
Yakin likes to say that he sees football like chess. He can’t be expected to ignore the invitation to inspect the layers of rust on Shaw. Switzerland’s forward Dan Ndoye, capable of playing on the right or the left, is probably the fastest player England will have faced in the tournament so far.
Shaw is an option either at left-back if England persist with a back four or left wing-back if they switch to a back three. Ezri Konsa had been expected to deputise for the suspended Marc Guehi, but Shaw could also be a more experienced option as the left of three center backs, with Bukayo Saka at left wing-back and Kieran Trippier switching to the right.
The benefits of England switching to 3-4-2-1 would include liberating Phil Foden to play in his natural inside-right position, while two wing backs playing on their “natural” wing would provide varied crossing options that England’s previous approaches have lacked.
Whatever option Southgate settles on, there’s a sense that his team are making it up as they go along, hoping it will be all right on the night, while Switzerland are a finely-tuned machine. But now it’s up to the Swiss to deliver the performance their ebullient fans expect. And England can’t realistically keep playing as badly as they have done until now. Can they?
